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1 Die Väterhermeneutik Der Aachener Synode 809 Einen Analyse Aus

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1 Die Väterhermeneutik Der Aachener Synode 809 Einen Analyse Aus 1 Die Väterhermeneutik der Aachener Synode 809 Einen analyse aus östlicher Sicht Aachen September 24th 2009: Dr Marcus Plested I have heard it claimed that the spell-check facility in early versions of Microsoft Word failed to recognise the term filioque and suggested instead the term ‘fallacy’. Would that all ecumenical discussions were so simply resolved. The seemingly interminable filioque dispute is perhaps the single most depressing chapter in the whole sorry saga of estrangement and misapprehension that has sundered Greek East and Latin West. It is an acute and painful irony that endless hot air on the subject of the Spirit should have produced so little real appreciation of the actual operation of the Spirit – indeed the opposite effect, estrangement from the Spirit, is more often in evidence in the filioque debates.1 Undoubtedly one of most depressing aspects of the filioque dispute is the mode of patristic reception that it encouraged. The Fathers are all too often treated not as a treasury but as an arsenal, not as storehouses of wisdom but as sources of theological artillery. Passages from their works are de-contextualised and de-personalised, torn from their scriptural foundations and thrown at the enemy with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Such an approach manifestly betrays the very nature of the patristic theological enterprise and renders sincere ecumenical engagement impossible. I exaggerate slightly in my image of patristics as ballistics – but only slightly. What I want to do in this paper is to approach the patristic hermeneutic of the Council of Aachen as a particular mode of reception: specifically a non-iconic mode of reception. An alternative paradigm of iconic reception will also be advanced. I shall do this, in accordance with my brief, from an eastern perspective. The Decretum Aquisgranense represents a new departure in patristic reception. Patristic authority had long been appealed to in conciliar settings – indeed the very notion of ‘the Fathers’ emerges out of the claim to continuity with earlier councils. The iconoclast and iconophile councils of 754 and 787 each claimed extensive 2 patristic support as a key dimension of their claim to ecumenical status. But the Council of Aachen is unprecedented in the way in which it presents the Fathers as an indiscriminate and univocal force whose authority is both pre-determined and incontrovertible. The mode of reception adopted by the council may be illumined by comparison with the closely-connected Opus Caroli regis contra synodum (Libri Carolini).2 This work, which can (after Freeman) be attributed in large part to Theodulf of Orleans, presents King Charles’ riposte to the council of 787, the council received as the Seventh Ecumenical Council. The Opus Caroli regis cites patristic authorities in accordance with a pre-determined list of accepted authors, that of the pseudonymous Decretum Gelasianum. The testimony of anyone not on that list could therefore be safely ignored: the Opus rules out St Gregory of Nyssa on these grounds. This was convenient in the context of the filioque debate given that Gregory of Nyssa might be used to support a per filium formula. Even within the writings of ‘canonical’ authors, any awkward or ambiguous material could also safely be ignored if it failed to conform with a pre-established construct of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. And of course the Fathers cannot, by definition, controvert the teaching authority of the Petrine see and must mean something else even if they appear to do so. By extension (and in practice), if Rome itself has any doubts on the matter, then it must be helped to manifest its own self-evident orthodoxy. The Decretum Aquisgranense conforms very closely to this pattern of reception. Certain other texts of the period betray a very similar approach, most notably the collection of biblical, patristic and conciliar material gathered by Arn of Salzburg. As will be well known in this gathering, Willjung has made a strong case for ascribing principal authorship of the Decretum to Arn precisely by comparison with this collection of pro-filioque texts. In all these works, a definite bias towards Latin writers is evident. This is a bias that goes beyond the mere question of availability of 1 As Sergius Bulgakov sagely remarks, ‘It is remarkable that this filioque debate killed all interest in the theology of the Holy Spirit’. ET: The Comforter (tr. B. Jakim: Grand Rapids MI 2004), 130. 2 Das Konzil von Aachen 809 ed. H. Willjung (MGH Concilia 2.2) (Hanover 1998); Opus Caroli regis contra synodum (Libri Carolini) ed. A. Freeman (MGH Concilia 2.1) (Hanover 1998). On patristic reception in the latter see especially W. Otten, ‘The Texture of Tradition. The Role of the Church Fathers in Carolingian theology’ in I. Backus (ed.), The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West (Leiden 1997), 3-50. 3 texts. But the Decretum does make a serious attempt is made to recruit Greek writers to the cause, notably Athanasius and Cyril. The case with Athanasius is particularly flimsy given that it depends on the pseudo-Athanasian creed. In his authentic works, Athanasius has relatively little to say on the Holy Spirit and his Trinitarian framework remains more dyadic than triadic. With Cyril, none of the extracts given in the Decretum speak unambiguously of anything but the temporal mission of the Spirit, put forward within the broader programme of stressing the inseparability of consubstantial Son and Spirit.3 The appeal to four ecumenical councils highlights the universal pretensions of the Frankish Empire. The Fifth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople 553) was of particular interest for the Frankish theologians in that it included a condemnation of Theodoret’s work against Cyril which could be taken to encompass a condemnation of Theodoret’s critique of filioque language in Cyril. The claim in the Decretum that the general approbation of Augustine and other Latin Fathers at the Fifth Council conveyed approval of the filioque doctrine is tendentious at best. Of course, the Sixth Council is not appealed to given the ongoing controversy over the status of that council. The Second Council is referred to only obliquely, if at all. Overall, it must be said that the Decretum hardly succeeds in marshalling the authority of the said councils for the filioque cause. Mention of the pretensions of the new western imperium points to a further element of novelty in this council. Councils that had previously sanctioned some form of filioque doctrine: Seleucia-Ctesiphon in 410,4 Toledo in 589, or Hatfield in 680 had done so without polemical intent and with no suspicion that filioque language was in any way a contentious issue within the context of Nicene orthodoxy. Aachen was quite different. Just as Charlemagne’s empire laid claim to the political mantle of Rome, so his theologians laid claim to Christian Rome’s theological inheritance – and that meant, above all, the Fathers, Eastern and Western alike. The Carolingians could 3 The principle of extrapolation from economy to theology, from divine operation to divine nature, has never had significant purchase in the Christian East. 4 This was the council that received and upheld the Nicene profession of faith. In the West-Syrian (Miapysite) recension (which de Halleux has convincingly argued to be original), the council confesses ‘the living and holy Spirit, the living Paraclete who is from the Father and the Son’. The later East Syrian (Church of the East) version simply has, like Nicaea, ‘and in the Holy Spirit’. See S. Brock, ‘The Christology of the Church of the East’ in G. Dragas (ed.), Aksum-Thyateira (London 1985), 125- 42. Thanks to Richard Price for drawing my attention to this intriguing council. It is striking that this council is almost unknown – even among scholars of the filioque controversy. 4 hardly claim direct continuity with Rome or the Fathers but they were unhesitating in seeking to appropriate both. None of this intended to deny the existence of substantial patristic testimony favouring some sort of filioque doctrine and precluding an absolute monopatrist position. It is, rather, to draw attention to the very limited and static mode of reception employed here. Now given that the Council of Aachen’s forthright espousal of the filioque is inescapably intertwined with Carolingian rejection of the iconophile council of 787, it is surely not fanciful to seek a theological connection between the two. The position articulated in the Libri Carolini and upheld by the Council of Frankfurt in 794 argues for a middle way between iconoclasm and iconodulism, rejecting alike the Councils of 754 and 787. Following Gregory the Great, images are to be regarded as educational and edifying but not as objects of veneration or worship. Leaving aside the question of the mangled reports of 787 on which the Carolingian theologians were basing their objections, it is apparent that the possibility of a participatory relationship between icon and archetype was explicitly ruled out. The icon might serve to recall some figure or story to the viewer’s mind but its significance was firmly restricted to the material world.5 An icon could not in any real sense be said to offer a means of access to eternity for the temporal believer, to proclaim the incarnation in its very materiality, or to manifest Christ and the saints in the world. Even the image of God in man was a somewhat nebulous concept that had few practical implications.6 By ruling out any properly iconic theology, the Carolingians were effectively closing a door between heaven and earth. Or, to use the language of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, disenchanting the cosmos by blocking the ingress of the wholly other. The Carolingians could hardly be expected to have developed any very subtle grasp of iconophile theology given that the whole controversy took place well outside their borders.
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